I know I am not the only one who is totally frustrated with the inability to move Newsstand into a folder of its own or remove all together on …

I know I am not the only one who is totally frustrated with the inability to move Newsstand into a folder of its own or remove all together on the iPhone 5 or iOS 6. Well, after much time I have finally discovered a way that is possible to move it into another folder or remove it all together! So below is my step by step guide on how you too can finally do something with Newsstand.

First, before you do anything you will need to download a program called iBackupBot and install it. Luckily it is available for both Mac and Windows, so all users of iOS 6 or the iPhone 5 will have this available. You can download the software from the below link, of course choose the right option depending on which O/S you use.

First, in iTunes if your method of backup is now already set to “Back up to this computer” change it to this option now and backup via hitting the sync button.

Now, open up iBackupBot and open the backup of the device you just backed up in iTunes.

Now look for the path called Library/Springboard/IconState.plist and double click on it. If a popup box appears requesting you to register, just hit cancel. To help find this easier, you can sort the paths in alphabetical order by clicking the path button on top.

Now you must search for the text where the Newsstand folder is located. The exact text you need to highlight and the exact way you should highlight is shown below. Make sure you select it exactly as shown because any spaces could cause an error. Once you highlight the text to news stand you can copy and paste it to the folder where you would like to store it or delete it entirely. As you can see, I have moved mine into a folder called “Books”. To simply remove it, just delete the highlighted text.

Hit the Save Icon in the upper left.

Now you must close the plist Editor Window by clicking on the red circle in the upper right.

Your final step is to restore your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch right from iBackupBot by selecting the restore backup/file to iPhone/iPod Touch from the main toolbar.

This will take a few minutes and your phone will need to reboot. Do not worry, nothing has gone wrong. When it restarts, you will see your Newsstand folder has been moved to the destination of your choice. As you can see by the screen grab below, mine is now in a folder called books.

Last but not least, be sure to set your backup method back to iCloud if that is now you normally backup up your device.

If you have any questions or run into any problems, leave it in the comments below and I will do my best to help you along the way! Hopefully this will help save you some frustration and time!

9 comments

This does work. It appears you can’t delete it though. If you delete it, it will return to the first page of your phone. You can easily move it to the utilities folder though (or any folder of your choice). On a side note, if for some reason you receive an error saying that you are on able to back up your phone through iTunes, DO NOT restore the pone because it will not help any. I was getting this error and thought restoring the phone would help, but it was a waste of time and I still received the error after the restore. All you need to do to correct this is go into the iBackupBot and delete any of the backup files listed (the entire backup and not just the IconState.plist file). After that, do the backup again and it should work. I hope this will help someone.

It appeared to be a good post, and a good job was done with the steps, but it didn’t work. As someone else has said, it puts the icon back on the home screen. I tried this twice. I went through all of the other strings and keys, no such luck in finding the newsstand anywhere else. Apple probably found out that people were doing this and through the last update they had, not that long ago, prevented this from working. I am not sure why they are making such a big deal about people keeping this dumb icon for. The other thing I am trying to figure out is how to add a new search engine for the web browser (Safari). I like dogpile, but you are forced to use those three they have listed. I thought maybe this program would be a solution to add a new key somewhere, but no such luck on that either. If someone has a solution to either of these a post would be great. Please don’t suggest using an alternate browser either. Well, thanks for the attempt on the issue anyway.

Hey, Man! I really like this fix, in theory. I seems like it may actually work, but I’m having the same problem as a couple of the posters above. I don’t see that you’ve replied to them, but I’m hoping maybe you sent them direct replies or something so I’m gona try posting.

My issue:
I’d like to move NS in to an existing folder I have designated for unused apps. I may have use for them eventually so I don’t want to toss them.

I highlight and select the text as you explain, but to move it to another folder, I think some of the text related to the Newsstand has to be removed as Newsstand is a folder itself so pasting ALL the selected NS text in to my destination folder seems to confuse the process. Can you describe exactly which edits, if any, have to be made to the NS text in the editor?
Again, Thanks for the fix, I will be very pleased to get it to work for my particular case.
-JAD

I’m guessing this might work if the details of copy/cutting/pasting etc. were a little more detailed. For me, it failed. And I’m guessing it’s because that step 4, the most important, you seem to gloss over and assume people just understand how to move it into another folder. For me, this has gone in to the failed options bin like every other fix I’ve read out on the web. Why is this stupid icon so dam hard to get rid of? It’s like Apple acting like a pre pubescent teen.

Hi,
I tried to follow your guide, but when I choose to simply delete the lines regarding Newsstand it just pops up on the first page of the homescreen instead of being gone…
Do you know if it is impossible to remove Newsstand? Am I forced to put in a folder if I want to get “rid” of it?
Thanks,
Morten

Thanks for this great method. the problem I faced is when I am trying to restore the file through iBackupbot I got error code 36.
device restarts while doing this but could not replace the file due to this error. any advice?